New York

About a week after I got back from Texas I was able to fly to NYC to hang with my mom and Lucy for a couple days (I have the best husband EVER).  We had a great time.  I sure love being in New York.  The first night I spent in Queens with Annie and McKay and was so glad to spend at least a couple hours with them.  I should have taken some pictures!

I was pretty bad at taking pictures, but here's a peek at some things we did.  Most of our time was spent eating and shopping and seeing shows.  The first night we saw a small show that my brother's high school friend was in.  It was great!  Plus Bernadette Peters was sitting 20 feet away, so that was pretty sweet.

view from our hotel-we were joking it had "park views" (this is my camera almost all the way zoomed in)

Shake Shack

Levain cookie

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We met Adam Pascal after the show-love him!!

The second day we headed downtown-right during the Giants Superbowl Parade.  It was crazy town!

WTC memorial

New York pizza @ Lombardi's

Purl Soho

Times Square

Crepes.  Yummm

Shoppin with Lucy

Last stop: Laduree!  

Such a fun time-I can't wait to go back!

January

January is not my most favorite month.  There's the huge let down after the holidays and the realization that winter has actually just barely started.  But we tried to make the most of it nonetheless.  Classes started back up and I got to take one this time!  Kellogg is awesome and lets partners sit in on pretty much any class we want.  I took a marketing class from one of Sam's favorite professors which was great.
Here's the month in instagram pictures.

We started out the month right with a New Years/birthday party with friends

Parker started Primary.  I'm a teacher so I was able to watch him.  I may have cried while watching him sing "I am a Child of God"...and three other times.

We had crazy weather.  50 degrees one day, snowing the next.

Went to the Museum of Science and Industry with friends

Costco

 

Our cooking group did raw foods-it was crazy.  I made a raw cheesecake-surprisingly delicious!

at the end of the month I went home to Texas to watch Lucy in Okalhoma!

And was finally able to meet my new niece Jenna.  How cute is she?

So January ended up being pretty awesome!  

We had a lovely Christmas at home, just the four of us.  I was really hoping for a white Christmas, but alas, it turned out to be beautiful.

Christmas Eve we had our traditional fondue dinner

Then Santa delivered new pjs to the front door

Woody and Buzz!

After bed Santa came again!

I think this was the best Christmas yet, the boys were both really into the whole thing.  It was magic.

Parker couldn't wait to open the big presents

Scooters!!

I think there was a little too much excitement-they both ended up in time outs.  Ha!

The first week of Sam's break was spent in Florida with Sam's family.  We roadtripped it down.  The boys love the car, can't you tell?

We spent the night in Atlanta with some friends.  I love this picture of them.

Once in Florida, we spent a lot of time hanging with the fam, going to the pool, and playing Dance Central.  Well mostly Meg played and we watched.  

Parker having a dance off with Aunt Meg

Of course we had to do Disney one day.  The Schmidts love Animal Kingdom so we started there with the safari.  This giraffe was leading the way walking down the road.  

Later at Epcot we got to meet all the characters.  Parker was being weird and didn't want to see Mickey. 

The one he really wanted to see was Daisy. 

Later that night Sam brought Lincoln back to the hotel, but Parker wasn't ready to go so we had a "date" (his words) and went on a bunch of rides together.  It was the best part of the day.  I love hanging out with this kid.

He's the only one that will go on the teacups with me

Autopia

We also hit up Downtown Disney on afternoon and played at the big Lego store.

Oh my gosh I haven't blogged in 3 months.  Time flies.  My laptop was running low on disk space, so I couldn't import any more pictures from my camera.  What's a blog post without pictures?  I finally bought an external hard drive, so we're back in business.  Unfortunately a lot has happened the past 3 months.  I thought about just skipping over them, but I would be sad if I didn't document.

Flashback to December...

We decided to do an activity advent calendar.  I just made up some envelopes from striped paper and we wrote 24 activities on little cards to go inside the envelopes.  Some were bigger than others, but the boys loved waking up each morning to see what we were going to do.

one day we had an indoor picnic

we rode the train downtown to the Christkindle market

getting some pretzels at the market

afterwards we stopped by Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes (for the boys) and banana pudding (for me)

we visited the Winder Wonderland Express at the Chicago Botanic Gardens (twice actually).   It was awesome-that's downtown Chicago made of plant materials.  

We visited the children's museum where Sam taught Parker some dad skillz

my favorite favorite FAVORITE thing we did was ride the Christmas CTA train.  Seriously it was awesome.  There was tinsel, lights, and elves handing out candy canes inside.  AND Santa and his reindeer ride on an open car in the train so you can get out and say hi at the end of the line.  Magic.

It was a fun month and by the time Christmas rolled around our wall looked more like this.  I love holiday cards.